


Pot and Kettle

by Gilded_Pleasure



Series: Within These Walls [1]
Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: All Over The Furniture, Angst, Biting, Emotional Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Eventual Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Joanlock - Freeform, Oral Sex, Scratching, Sex, Unforgivable Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3760270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilded_Pleasure/pseuds/Gilded_Pleasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after 3 x 19: One Watson, One Holmes.<br/>Joan isn't okay. Sherlock is concerned. The most important relationship in both of their lives has swung dangerously out of balance. Two people who only have each other to turn to are facing the hard truth that no single person can be <em>everything</em> for someone else.<br/>But oh, how they <em>try</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pot and Kettle

Joan woke gasping for breath, hectic afterimages of someone strangling, choking on nothing, flashing across the walls of her brain.

For the _third_ time that week.

The air in her bedroom seemed close, stifling, and she was sweating even in her light cotton nightshirt and shorts. Groaning quietly, she swung her legs out of bed and walked towards the stripe of light visible around the door, which she didn't even bother to close most nights. Not since she had moved back to the brownstone. Being woken by her housemate's noise was just as often a pleasant reprieve from her nocturnal thrashing, hopelessly entangled in twisted sheets and her own subconscious.

She looked dolefully into her reflection, then wiped her face with a warm washcloth, pressing it against each eye, removing traces of tears and night-sweat. Her eyes were swollen and red, her dark tresses tangled from being ground between her scalp and pillow for the last three hours.

Between cases as well as on them, her sleep had been growing increasingly irregular, but she couldn't quite bring herself to care enough to do anything about it. She ran the cloth under cold water and pressed it against her eyes. It felt good, although it reminded her she was a bit clammy all over. Accepting that she felt obnoxiously awake already, she brushed her teeth and hair, and headed downstairs, hoping that Sherlock wouldn't make any remarks about her obviously unbalanced emotional state. After all, _he'd_ be one to talk. She didn't waste her time hoping he wouldn't _notice_ , however.

 _The pot and the kettle in domestic bliss_ , she thought wryly.

Sherlock, seated cross-legged on the floor amidst a sea of productive clutter, flicked his eyes over her briefly as she crossed the library, but otherwise refrained from comment. She headed down to the kitchen, rinsed the copper teakettle and filled it, put it on to boil. It was cooler down here, the heat of the brownstone rising up to crowd around her in her bedroom at night, seeking her out. Plopping down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table she found herself pondering the conversation she'd had with him the night she decided to move back in after _the tragedy_ , as Sherlock had coined it.

_\---_

_Sherlock had looked up from Moriarty’s disturbing letter, standing almost still for a change, focused on her._

_“And you?”_

_She'd replied, “I feel okay,” after considering a moment. Everything had gone wrong, but it had made her understand her choice. That she had no choice. She gazed up into his intent expression, and continued._  
_“I feel clear about something. Our work, what we do... it's not just a job now. It's who I am. I'm a detective. I'm ready to embrace that.” He'd frowned down at her in that gentle way he had, head tilted back but his eyes resting on her face, waiting. Accepting whatever she might have to say. She took a deep breath and said, “I live in this world, your world, and I probably will for the rest of my life.”_  
_The intensity of his gaze held her upright, as he rocked slowly forward and then back. A ghost of hope suffused his features, pleased but not-actually-smiling in the way she'd grown accustomed to, that made her heart melt even now, torn as it was._

_He murmured softly, voice resonating in his chest,“It isn't my world, It's our world.”_

_She'd absorbed the words in a half-daze, thinking only that she needed to come home, to be here, with his steady presence beside her, clamoring and clacking and puttering away all around her. To fill up the silence that had clamped down on her, crawled inside her, ever since...._  
_“I understand that now. I accept it. I know what it means.”_  
_His face softened even further in the soft glow from the lamp, his eyes seeming huge, the dark blue gone black, compelling her to continue. “And what does it mean?” he queried softly, a verbal caress._

_“It means that it's ridiculous for me to think that I can have a normal life,” she answered, her voice sounding high and young, even to herself. The words had kept coming, rising up from where they curled like a snake in her chest._

_“I'm not gonna do that anymore. Just like I'm not gonna pretend this isn't the best place for us to do our work.”_  
_He was nodding, his lips quirking up a bit. “You're always welcome to come here. You know that.”_  
_She'd stepped forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. “You don't understand. I'm saying that what I need to do is commit myself to this work completely. The best place for me to do that is here. I want to come back to the brownstone.”_

\---

The kettle made the odd little _squirk_ it usually let out just before it demonstrated its true capacity to shriek, and with a jump, she rushed over to the stove. Opening the cupboard, she selected one of the herbal teas she'd incorporated back into their pantry. The clammy feeling had departed as her long cotton shirt and loose shorts pajama set let the sweat of her night terrors dry without discomfort. After weeks of strangling nightmares, she couldn't bear wearing anything even remotely binding to bed, and had even purchased new nightclothes several sizes larger than she had been accustomed to in the past.

She prepared tea for herself, and after a moment's consideration, Sherlock as well, pondering fondly on how little they really _needed_ to speak as they cohabited here. It wasn't the sullen, defiant resentment Sherlock had shown in the early days, when she'd first come to live here as his sober companion. Back when she'd been at him constantly, prying for information, trying to engage him in the kind of conversations she was used to having with recovering addicts. Their regrets, their self-recrimination, their rock bottoms. Or when she'd still been his protege, before he'd left, or she'd left, or they just...left each other. Left their comfortable silences, their rollicking arguments, the morning breakfast trays, Clyde crawling about in her bed of a workday morning.

So much of their friendship, their partnership, had involved wasted exercises; power struggles and staring contests. She didn't feel like she was certain of all that much anymore, but one thing remained: she never doubted they were equals in their work. Their minds worked in completely different but utterly complimentary ways, and they were stronger together. More efficient.

She gave a bitter half-smile as she considered how often she had dug at him, trying to force him to interact with her in the ways she'd been convinced were essential. Invading his privacy, pushing him to behave in ways she now knew had more to do with her own sense of propriety, the way she'd been raised... had he ever worked out that her expectations of herself were higher even that those she placed on others? Maybe he couldn't see the ways they already resembled each other before they'd even met. Working alone all of those months when he had been in London, she had had to let a lot of those expectations go, in the end. And she'd begun to chafe under the strain of remaining professional, on occasion. She had begun to chafe under a great many things.

With a sigh, she took the two cups and plodded back up the stairs to the library. Sherlock didn't look up from where he sat shirtless in the center of a mess that radiated out in a spiral from his cross-legged, stiff-yet slumped figure. She bent down and set the tea in a small clear area near his left hip. He flicked his eyes at it, acknowledging its presence. There were papers of course, as well as skeins of jute cord, several disassembled door locks, a brick...she smiled to herself as she curled up in an armchair and watched him flick his fingers against each other, his wrists resting on his knees.

Watching Sherlock had always been interesting to Joan. He had the most remarkable body language of anyone she had ever met, never still, never at ease the way other people were. Even when he was perfectly comfortable, as he was now, intent on whatever knots he was currently unraveling. She regretted how much his constant movement and aura of agitation had subconsciously irritated her when they'd first known each other. It had made her snappish and slightly hypercritical of him; not that there wasn't a lot to criticize, but those tics of his had set her teeth on edge.

But as they'd grown closer, more accustomed to the ways they clashed and the ways they just _clicked_ , the incessant buzz of his presence made her understand for the first time why some people slept with their televisions on. Now his self-soothing, repetitive movements soothed her as well. After years of knowing each other, living together, and saving each other, he was just as likely as she was to engender conversation. _He's been starting_ most _conversations lately, we even talked about it_. She frowned. A strange guilt gnawed at her belly as his pointed comments on her standoffish behavior tried to crowd in. She firmly pushed them away, and went back to her study.

She was so accustomed to his tattoos that she didn't really _see_ them anymore; his multicolored skin only formed images when she really thought about it. It sometimes amused her that he always seemed to choose to either go entirely shirtless, or buttoned his shirts right up to the collar, with a vest and jacket for good measure. They always looked slightly awkward on him, with his odd posture that managed to be stiff and slouched at the same time, the childishly protruding abdomen, shoulders rattling around under the layers like they were trying to escape. No one who'd seen him buttoned up six ways to sunday would ever guess that he had that lean runner's torso under all of it, whipcord and bone.

 _He's not very handsome_ , she thought fondly, _but he looks much better out of his shirts than in them, better-proportioned...but his hair is terrible either way_. In fact, he'd had to have her fix up the right side with a beard trimmer, where one of his louder experiments had scorched away some hair. His thin lips were turned down in a habitual frown; the dim light enhanced lines in his face that probably hadn't been there before his struggles with addiction. He wasn't beautiful, but he always looked good to her. Familiar, _dear_ to her in a way that made her heart crumple like a ball of tinfoil when she thought about it now, after the last few weeks.

 _Two Holmeses and no Watsons_ , he'd said to her. She knew what he meant, and wished with all her heart that she did not.

His hands had stilled, blurred....she realized her eyes had filled with tears that had begun sliding down her face without her permission, or even her notice. He'd been _worried_ about her. Worried enough to confront her about her behavior...to rework and regift her with her own advice about _healthy relationships_ , the nature of friendship, how important maintaining connections with people is to someone coping with grief. His unusual displays of awkwardness around her recently. That terrified smile in the library, when she'd stared at him in disbelief after he'd asked a simple question, _how are you_? It was the last question on earth she wanted to hear, much less answer.

Because for the first time in a very long while, she didn't _know_. What she couldn't bring herself to say to him was that she was afraid. Fear, and terrible guilt that came with understanding that any connections she had or tried to make from now on would only lead to ruin. She craved those relationships...but the cost was just too high. And now, she was being nearly cruel to the only person she had left, the only person she knew who lived in, and with, the same danger she did.

And who was now staring up at her in what, for him, might almost be horror.

“Watson...?” he whispered, licking parted lips, eyes darting over her face in consternation.

For an instant, she hotly resented how exposed she felt under his gaze sometimes, like her skin had been peeled open to show everything that must remain hidden if she was to survive. She knew how it looked; her sleeplessness and nightmares, her taciturn behavior, withdrawing from family and friends, spurning activities she used to enjoy.... She had been a goddamned _doctor_ , she knew the signs of depression. But everything seemed so blurred lately, further apart and formless. All of the things she used to know about herself and other people slipping more and more out of true. The resentment departed as quickly as it had flared, just leaving her gutted; he looked at her like he barely knew who she was anymore, either. She curled up into a still-upright ball, wrapped her arms around her knees, bent her head and sobbed.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered tightly, not even able to drum up embarrassment over her outburst. Her spatial awareness would never equal Sherlock's sensory analysis of of air currents and heat signatures, but she was pretty darn sure that he'd risen up from his puzzle-nest and was standing beside her chair, arms quivering stiffly at his sides. Breathing heavily through his nose, he rumbled, “There's no need to apologize for your...discomfiture, Watson, it's perfectly-” She interrupted him by reaching out and taking hold of his bending-and-unbending wrist without looking up from where she'd pressed her eyes against her tented knees.

He'd stopped breathing abruptly, and she was filled with hollow despair as she realized she'd transgressed; she had always respected his aversion to being casually touched. In fact, the more emotionally fraught the situation, the more he _avoided_ touching her, as far as she could recall. When he'd come back to the the brownstone after she'd been kidnapped by _Le Milieu_ and held against him, he had run up to lean forward and stare into her face, touching her only with his scorching gaze, eyes scoring her to the bone to ascertain if she'd been harmed inside or out. His pulse fluttered madly against her fingers, and her stomach twisted with self-disgust. But she couldn't bring herself to let go.

“I meant,” her throat hitched and she tried again, controlling her voice as much as she could. “What if I can't _be_ that Watson anymore? If you....you need me to be how I was.”

He let out the breath he'd been holding raggedly, and she finally looked up through tears and tangled hair at his cold-seeming profile.

“I was mistaken,” he almost-whispered. “It was selfish, and I...”

He finally turned his head on his neck, tilted down to look at her. His eyes glittered darkly from shadowed sockets in the dim light, his mouth carved downwards; just continuing to exist always seemed to bring him pain. It spoke to her now more than it ever had before, and she was truly sorry for that. Sorry to share it. And even more sorry that he could see it clearly written on her face in that moment, because it hurt him anew to see it reflected there.

He pulled his wrist out of her grasp, and she let him go, feeling cored like an apple.

_Pot and kettle, enhancing each other's black moods._

He used his foot to push the ottoman in front of the chair she curled up in, and surprisingly, plopped down onto it in front of her, knees apart. It brought them face-to-face, which was unusual for almost every sitting arrangement in the brownstone. They almost always spoke standing on opposite sides of a room, sat facing the same direction, often while working on individual tasks. _Across boundaries_ , she thought to herself.

In truth, most of the boundaries she'd maintained so carefully over the years had splintered and chipped away, grown unstable and shifting even farther since she'd come back here. Their furniture arranged like a maze to guide them forever parallel, in step with each other but never intersecting. But the maze had been built on sand, violence and horror scouring away the paths they had worn in the floorboards. She'd seen the shift coming, and she'd moved out, fled to her own apartment. A chance to turn it away, avert disaster; a chance to have what she was _supposed_ to want instead of all the things she shouldn't. And she'd justified her choice to herself so easily, even knowing what it might do to Sherlock. Because she'd needed something for herself, but that person was a self that might not exist any longer.

“Watson, I have stood witness to what you've endured, and I feel compelled occasionally to remind you of things you already know. That I have been through...similar circumstances. That you are not the only one who has experienced the dark night of the soul, so to speak. I am quite thankful to no longer be who I was. I hadn't considered that, in regard to yourself,” he finished in a rush.

His eyes remained firmly set to the left, and she was too used to this mannerism by now to be tempted to follow his eyes, to seek out what he saw, as she would have with anyone else. He continued, in his softly formal way, “None of this ameliorates that fact that I am quite accustomed to being the one in need of a sympathetic ear, much as I am loathe to admit it. I have been.... _trying_ , in both senses of the word. And my efforts have appeared to do more ill than good, much of the time.” He sighed almost painfully at that. “Nonetheless, what I have said remains true. Friendship... _this_ friendship, has taught me that we must continue to move towards the best aspects of each other. Rather than, advertently or _inadvertently_ , encouraging one another towards self-castigation and wallowing in the resultant misanthropy.”

The fingers on his left hand reflexively performed a coin-rolling trick with no coin, as she'd come to recognize that particular movement one day while she was reading up on sleight-of-hand. An exercise to promote dexterity. Sherlock's hands were incapable of idleness.

As he spoke, she had uncurled a bit, sitting as she usually would in the chair, which brought her legs down between his. He turned his eyes towards her, searching her face for some indication of her reaction. He looked strangely open with his legs apart and hands on his thighs, fingers drumming along his black jeans. His pupils had dilated in the dim light and his head was tilted slightly back and to the side, as if averting the intimacy of their physical closeness with his chin. He was tall enough that with her in the chair, his seat on the ottoman had brought their heads to almost exactly the same level. He just watched, and waited.

“What else is there left for me?” she asked leadenly. “I have to learn how to be...lonely. That, or just...” she almost choked, “watch the body count pile up. How can you love people when it's dangerous just to know you? Andrew. Irene. Bell.” He flinched at that, almost imperceptibly, but she couldn't stop. “Kitty. Everyone...” she tactfully omitted Mycroft, hoped it wasn't obvious. “ _What we do_ gets mixed up in everything, nothing can be separate, because it's _who we are_. No matter how hard we try to compartmentalize it. I mean... and _Agatha_. Everything we want gets twisted into this. Everyone has to leave, gets left, gets hurt or, or _killed_. I thought I chose this life, but when _it chose me_ , someone died. You were right in the end, I didn't even love him. He died because I was _supposed_ to...” Her throat clicked closed. She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?” she whispered dryly, staring down at her long, delicate hands; not a surgeon's any longer. So why did they feel bloodier now?

Sherlock, with more trepidation than she'd seen him manifest while diffusing a bomb, leaned forward slightly and took her hands into his. They were dry and hot, energetic, thumbs rubbing at the backs of her hands, his callused thumbs stroking the backs of her knuckles. She'd thought he had musician's hands once, but they belonged to a detective. Just like hers.

He looked down at them as he huffed awkwardly, “If there is, we still have each other. Which is more than I ever expected to be graced with in this lifetime. I maintain I was selfish to... to demand that you be _okay_ for my sake.”

A flutter began deep in her belly as his rough thumbs stroked her knuckles over and over. “Sherlock,” she whispered, squeezing his hands. “How can we _help_ being selfish, when we need so much from each other? We both ask for too much,” she murmured brokenly, bitterly.

He glanced up at her and flinched away from the intensity of her gaze, then tilted his head back again, chin up, but he was staring at her lips as if they presented an unexpected puzzle. His mouth was open, and as his tongue darted out to nervously moisten his stubbled upper lip, she could just see his teeth gleaming whitely. That single slightly crooked one in his lower jaw clawing at her heart when she saw it. She'd catalogued all of his virtues, all of his flaws. _He was so dear to her._

“Are you asking?” he said throatily, shoulders hitching slightly, his eyes never leaving her lips. His hands had stilled on hers, gripping them firmly but gently. She felt their warmth radiating throughout her body, but her scalp was icy with the shock of realizing that _maybe she was_. She tried to take a breath, but her chest was too tight with loneliness, longing, and _pride_ , and how long had it been since she'd been touched, had _wanted_ to be touched, to accept anyone's comfort?

_He's the only safe place I have left._

She was done with staring contests and power struggles. This was a terrible idea. But she'd spent her life getting other people through endless nights, and here before her was the only person she could afford to let ease her through this one now. And the thing about Sherlock Holmes, when his full attention was focused on you, when his vibrating energy was this close, it crowded out almost everything else.

He hadn't moved at all, head tilted back and hooded gaze locked on her mouth, waiting for the mysteries to be revealed. Then, he surprised her.

“I won't say no, I promise you,” he almost panted. Even slightly backlit, she could see his ears and neck had flushed. “You have but to ask. Are you asking?”

His unexpected admission moved her to smash apart the last of what she had considered _boundaries_ , and gave her the breath to whisper, “Yes.”

The moment she spoke, his hands released hers and slid up her arms, and he leaned smoothly towards her, bracing one knee on the seat of the chair she sat on ( _his chair_ ). She could feel the heat of his bare chest as he brought his lips down on hers, stubble grazing her full mouth and tasting of salt sweat, the herbal tea, overwhelming her senses with _him_ as he exhaled heavily through his nose and into hers. She opened her mouth cautiously at first, two inquisitive organs acquainting themselves, analyzing the familiar and the strange. _Two Holmses,_ she thought, _cataloguing the smallest details._ His hands slid off her shoulders and stroked her sides expertly, one barely brushing the side of her breast before it slipped deliciously down over her too-large and nearly sheer cotton shirt to clasp her hip firmly, the other coming up to gently cradle the back of her head.

 _Of course he's an expert_ , she thought wryly, and yet it didn't bother her enough to spoil the animalistic comfort she derived from his closeness, or the thrill of what was ultimately a transgression. Back when there had still been such things as _other relationships_ , it would have been unthinkable. Even now, she was slightly concerned about how to touch _him_ , considering his usual aversions, his defensiveness. His radiating and insulating aura of _weltshmerz_. For the moment she was content to leave her hands where they had come to rest at his belt and enjoy being quite thoroughly kissed by her friend, whose almost electric agitation was transforming itself into... An _eagerness to please_ was the only way should could account for it.

She felt his thigh begin to tremble a bit at bracing most of his weight, which made sense considering he had both arms around her lightly, his torso still arched away from her, as if she was made of polished wood and he didn't want to mar her finish with his sweaty chest. The last thing she wanted was to feel like an instrument he was playing, or like two people concentrating on a formal dance with faces averted, never acknowledging what they were doing even while in the middle of it. She'd had encounters with an ex or two that had been like that, and she had no desire to replicate that mood. But she couldn't think of anyone she'd known this well _before_ anything happened between them, and she didn't want him to morph into a stranger for the sake of what would ultimately be cold comfort.

She moved her arms, and she felt Sherlock tense, pull away slightly. Putting her hands firmly on his shoulders, she pushed down and he took the hint immediately, shoving back the ottoman and kneeling on the floor in front of her. She'd had a slight smile on her lips, planning to lighten the rather dire mood, but something about the way he looked up at her as he knelt, his dark blue eyes slightly glassy, parted lips red and wet, sent a bolt of lightning low into her belly.

Instead, she confided, “I'm not...I don't want some kind of empty performance. I refuse to go through the motions with you, imagining I was with someone else. ”

“I assure you, Watson, with you that would be an impossibility,” he replied resonantly. It should have been strange for someone she'd just been kissing to address her by her last name, but instead she was strangely moved by it. Without thinking, she reached out to touch his lips, to catch his words, and he neither resisted nor looked away from her. Captivated by a sudden impulse, she parted his lips with her first two fingers, pushed on the lower one, and he opened his mouth slightly. With an expected rush that threatened to make her start shaking, she slowly pushed her narrow fingers between his teeth and into his mouth.

She was met with no resistance, nor was any embarrassment or discomfort evident on his part. He just...accepted it, wholly and sincerely, no playacting of enjoyment or offense, gazing at her steadily. The sharpest tongue she knew lay quiescent under her fingers like soft wet velvet, and the sharpest mind she'd ever encountered, so sharp it had bled them both, seemed to gaze into her through brushed-steel eyes that held only sincere regard.

Breathing raggedly, she removed her fingers and framed his face with her forearms, rough stubble caressing the tender skin there as she leaned in to kiss him hungrily. The hands that had brought dozens of breakfast trays up to her bedroom glided up the outside of her thighs, squeezed the sides of her hips. She broke the kiss to press her cheek against his, his scent like olive oil and old books enveloping her as she drew him forward to kneel between her legs, and she pressed his face against her neck, wrapping her arms around him, hands loosely fisted.

He inhaled deeply against her ear, her hair, his naked chest now radiating heat through her thin t-shirt. He opened his mouth to taste her skin cautiously, soft splay of lips and tongue (the gentle nudge of teeth) on her neck making gooseflesh run up her body in a shiver down her right side, the nipple of her breast drawing itself together into an erect point. She wondered how she smelled to him; she'd been sweating through her pajamas most of the night, and she had taken a rather casual attitude towards shaving her legs of late, but it mattered very little considering that there was nothing about her he didn't see, smell, or hear perfectly well from the arm's length he'd always kept her at. It could have been terrifying having him this close, hot and almost squirming against her, but instead it was a comfort, like a sweater out of the dryer. Any shocks from the static would be worth it. He made her feel...accounted for. Everything she'd been in her life, surgeon, sober companion, consulting detective... all of it visible to him constantly. Acknowledged. _Cherished._

He moved lower, and pressed his face against the cloth over her stomach, nuzzling like a curious animal. She could feel the cool inhale and hot exhale of his breath, the pinpricks of stubble through the thin cloth, and he hummed like an apiary, sound waves that traveled through her skin and up her body to her inner ear. Not so much heard as _felt_. His wiry arms encircled her waist, dropped lower to saddle her hips, and she felt them being pulled gently and inexorably forward on the leather seat cushion. With an almost unbearably sweet pang, she saw how the yellow light from the lamp on their mantle embossed the scar on his back. It was there that she'd removed the bullet Moriarty's rogue henchman had put into him. He had asked for her help and she'd bloodied her hands in him; their home surgery another transgression, a crossing of boundaries. These acts were familiar, and this man was familiar, but the two in juxtaposition was an overwhelming combination.

“We're meeting each other for the first time again,” she murmured dreamily, curving her body over him to touch the scar lightly. A violent shudder racked his wiry frame, and leaned up to look at her without relinquishing his hold around her hips. His face bore little resemblance to the practiced expression he'd worn at their true first meeting. More like when she'd come home to the brownstone to find him where he'd been waiting in a chair for god knows how long with a dishtowel pressed to his shoulder, blood sheeting down his shirt as he anticipated her return. Full of pain, and quiet urgency, and simple pleasure to see her.

_Watson. You're here._

“I sincerely hope to make a better impression,” he whispered, the flippant tone belying the tenderness in his face, his raised eyebrows creasing his forehead, and all of it pushed her over another edge she hadn't even known was there before she was falling.

She leaned back and let him run his hands down over her thighs, his skin looking quite ruddy, hairy and rough against her smooth olive complexion as he gently pushed her legs farther apart. He dipped his head and pressed his lips gently to her cotton-clad mound, making her inhale sharply through her nose. His hands were never still, and weren't now, running back up under her legs, up and over her rear, thumbs stroking her waist as he rubbed his mouth against the cloth, closed at first, then open, wetness seeking itself through the thinnest of barriers. Her whole body yearned towards the the friction he could provide, pressing up into his stubbled chin, seeking the contrast of roughness to his soft, too-pliant tongue.

One of her legs had in the meantime stretched out and found the ottoman behind him, the other bent with her bare foot braced on his denim-clad thigh. It was slightly awkward, almost laying in the chair this way, and at that moment he hooked his fingers into her waistband and looked up questioningly at her, requesting permission. In reply, she put her feet back on the floor and lifted her hips, and in one smooth motion he slid her shorts down and then off, leaving them on the floor. The second his mouth had allowed the cloth to fall away from her skin and the cool air had hit her, she realized how incredibly wet she'd become.

He had leaned back to look at her, sitting on his heels and breathing through his open lips. She looked down and tried to see herself through his eyes: long pale-brown thighs; dark, closely trimmed hair at their juncture (grown out evenly from the last time she'd shaved it completely, but denser at the cleft); the white cotton shirt pushed up over her belly but still covering her small, pert breasts.

It gave her a bit of a jolt. She'd seen herself like this many times, but this was Sherlock there in front of her, so familiar and strange with his eyes devouring her like they devoured everything, an obvious erection straining against the zipper of his jeans.

The incongruity of the situation seemed almost dangerous for a moment. She sat up a bit, not covering herself but drawing her arms in a little. He bounced slightly where he knelt, head tilted and darting his eyes at her longwise.

“I made a vow once, that I would allow no harm to come to you,” he breathed. “I may have...underestimated the myriad forms it can take. You, more than anyone, can understand that I was rash to presume that anyone can ever truly vow to _do no harm_ ,” he continued, his voice shaking. He was rubbing his index fingers along his thumbs surreptitiously.

With a deep breath, he licked his lips and proclaimed throatily, “Please understand that I will not _hurt_ you.”

“Then don't,” she replied.

His face crumpled enigmatically, and he leaned forward against her to press his open mouth against her body, kissing her stomach, upper thighs, hip; hands pushing up her shirt so he could kiss her breasts as well. She raised her arms over her head and grabbed the backrest of the chair, content to accept what he could give her. He kissed lower, and she parted her legs further, encouragingly, as she watched him. She could see his pulse pounding in his temple, the flush of arousal taking over his face and neck again as he darted his tongue into her slit, making her gasp.

Her eyes took him in: high forehead, narrow, pointed nose, wiry muscles playing under tattooed skin and the hair on his forearms as he caressed her gently, lightly. She found herself trying to gain leverage, tilting her hips up under his mouth, but he moved with her, kissing and teasing. She didn't want to look away from him, or forget anything. She wanted to feel put back together, and if that meant being taken apart first, she suspected he knew how to do it. He'd started a rhythm with his tongue, flicking insistently at her clit rather than pressing it firmly. Her hand released the back of the chair and crept forward and down to him, and without thinking, she lightly brushed her fingers along the back of his neck. He managed to flinch without actually stopping.

One of his hands snaked up and grabbed her wrist, surprising her momentarily. He immediately changed his grip to cup her hand without pulling his lips away from her; he pressed her open hand against the back of his neck and made her _squeeze_ , hard. He looked up and met her eyes with a piercing stare as he finally pressed his mouth firmly against her, sending _this is how I like it_ into her brain and a trembling rush of pleasure through her body at the long-desired press of lips and tongue, the roughness of his unshaven face.

Air left her lungs in a rush, not-quite-vocalizing but not very short of it either, and she tilted her hips up to meet him. Her hand crept up to his hair and gripped it firmly, using it for purchase as she ground against him. His eyelids fluttered without entirely closing, and he _hummed_ again, deliciously, deeply. She couldn't resist bringing her legs together to caress the stubbled sides of his face, contrasting it with the almost peach-fuzz sensation of the shorn sides of his hair. In response, his hands crept up along the backs of her thighs to cup her towards his mouth, and suddenly his thumbs were stroking the crease between her outer labia and her thighs. Those thumbs framed her vulva, stroking gently at first and then applying a gentle, steady pressure that seemed to pick her like a lock, igniting the visceral response of deep muscles inside her. As her entire pelvis clenched down with aching need, the bolt of combined sensation forced an almost angry-sounding “Oh!” from her lips as she looked at him in shock. She blinked, and let go of the hair she'd almost torn from the roots, and the wet, twisted mouth she'd torn away from her body. He looked at her with mild apology in his eyes as he huffed, “Too much?”

“No,” she gasped, “I mean...it's fine. Great, actually.”

He glanced downwards, then looked back up at her. “May I?” he whispered.

“Actually...” she glanced down at him, “did you know you still have your pants on?”

His throat flexed as he swallowed. “And you, your _shirt_ , if we are keeping some kind of score.”

In response, she pulled it off over her head, shaking her hair as it fell out of the cotton entanglement until it fell in a dark curtain to either side of her face. The way he was looking at her, almost as if the sight _hurt_ him somehow....

“Stand up,” she said abruptly. He stood immediately, oddly reminiscent of coming to attention. She took hold of his belt buckle, glancing at the small tattoo just above his waistband, looking up at his face. He held his arms close to his sides stiffly, wrists out and hands fisted, squeezing them gently as she drew the leather strap through the buckle, unhitched it, and unbuttoned his pants. She pulled his zipper and grasped the sides of the belted waistband, drawing his black jeans down steadily. His erection popped out of the gap in the front of his plaid boxer shorts as she let the trousers fall to the floor, and with a huff, he flung his boxers down as well, stepping out of them and standing before her with neither shame nor pride. She gazed curiously up into his face for a very long moment, then glanced down at his penis where it curved thickly out of a nest of dark hair.

“If you like,” he whispered softly.

She reached out and touched him, trusting her trained hands to respond to his body language. He gave a small sigh and a shiver as she stroked him gently, rubbed her thumb over the clear bead of fluid that formed at the tip. She looked up at him, and asked frankly, “what do _you_ like?”

He swallowed again, and said evenly, “If its all the same to you...I'd prefer to continue as we were.”

_Interesting._

“Go ahead,” she said, leaning back and feeling an unaccustomed quiet inside. This time, she boldly put her feet on his shoulders, enjoying the play of muscle under his skin and the symmetrical beauty of his stark collarbones, the hair on his chest ending there rather abruptly. She marveled at the realization that for the first time she could remember, she completely believed that her partner was exactly where he wanted to be, with his head between her legs. Sherlock showed no sign of discomfort at having knelt for so long, and he appeared to be perfectly willing to do nothing but this for the foreseeable future. _How long would he have kept his pants on_ , she thought as he clamped her folds between his lips and caressed them persuasively with his tongue, drawing an appreciative moan from her lips that was accompanied by a smile. He looked up at her, eyes crinkling in response to her amusement as he sighed against her, the breath from his nostrils tickling her skin and redolent of their combined scents.

He curved his right arm up and around her leg, long-fingered hand lightly stroking her belly as the fingers on his left began to tease between her folds under his chin. She gave a long, shuddering sigh as he pressed a long, mobile finger inside her, then slid it back out, wetting her thoroughly with his tongue before entering her with a second finger. He has begun a slow, insistent grind with his mouth against her clit as he curved them inside her, not-quite-beckoning, and put gentle pressure low on her abdomen with the other. _Like an exam_ , she thought, and would have laughed outright if it hadn't been the most amazing sensation she'd ever felt in her life.

She wasn't what she would consider an especially vocal partner, but she'd begun to hold her breath as she felt her excitement building under his determined and unhurried lips and tongue. When he scissored his fingers inside her, the breath she'd been holding escaped in a low groan. The hand on her abdomen was massaging gently, rubbing in small, increasingly insistent circles and his fingers almost felt like they were holding her apart, wet and open. It was as if she was falling, coming unmoored, but when her muscles clamped down on his fingers, he caught her and bounced her right back up. When she looked down, his eyes were locked on her face, almost glowing with fierce desire, something she could only categorize as _kindness_ , and utter fascination. He hummed against her again, and suddenly, she was _there_.

Instead of the bolt of lightning she'd been expecting, a slow-rolling surge came up from her depths, breaking like a wave over her entire body, and she gritted her teeth ineffectually against another throaty groan. Her hips bucked, and it happened again, then again, each spasm forcing her voice out of her and leaving her wrecked with its intensity. His arm clamped around her as she writhed through the rest of her orgasm, coaxing it out from her very core with his fingers; he somehow managing to pin her clit against her pubic bone with an open, flat tongue, giving her just enough to move against as she willed.

As soon as she started to sit up, he slid his fingers out of her, leaned up on his knees and wrapped his arms around her in an almost crushing embrace. His wet, open mouth met hers roughly, tasting of salt and herself, his breath coming raggedly and his hands hungrily roaming her body as they panted into each other.

He moved his lips to her neck, murmuring broken words, and she caught “... so beautiful, I _had no idea_ ,” his rough face abrading her neck and chest deliciously.

He was hard against her thigh, leaving a cooling wet trail after his searing heat, and she reached down to wrap her hand around him. She moved her fingers, squeezing gently, and he gasped against her neck. She locked her arm around his neck, and pulled his ear close to her mouth as she worked him. “I want you inside me now,” she whispered hotly, and felt him shudder as her breath tickled him. In fact, she was nearly frantic; rather than feeling satisfied after she'd come, she felt a new hunger grip her almost violently.

He leaned back, peering into her face searchingly, and she wondered for a brief moment what he was looking for. Whatever it was, she hoped he found it. He stood slowly, walked over to the fireplace and leaned down, made rummaging noises. She admired his lean angles, affirming to herself that he did indeed look much better completely out of clothes...he was ugly and beautiful at once. He straightened up holding a condom packet, and she felt a jolt of excitement as he walked back and held out his hand to her, like an invitation to dance.

She stood on shaky legs, and he led her to their couch where he sat in his accustomed manner, knees together with hands between them, and looked up at her with something that certainly wasn't innocence, something inexplicably sincere. She took a moment to marvel at him, distracted by trying to place his expression, and reached out to run her fingernails not-too-gently over his scalp and through his hair. He didn't stop looking up at her, but his body shook as she watched the gooseflesh form on the skin of his arms and chest.

Bracing her hand on the back of the couch, she leaned over him, reached down between his hands for the condom and opened it. Without a word, he obligingly leaned back and moved his hips forward, presenting himself to her, as she swung her leg over him and sat back on his knees. He had bent his head back to lean against the back of the sofa, lightly caressing the slight stubble on the sides of her knees with his restless fingertips. She took him in her hand, reveling in how smoothly the skin slid back and forth, before she pinched the tip of the condom deftly between her thumb and forefingers and smoothly rolled it down onto his penis with her other hand. Its thickest point was just below the full head, tapering slightly to its base; she found his shape obscurely pleasing. Then she leaned up and reached down, coming nose-to-nose with him and stopped, arrested by how large and dark his irises were as he gazed at her steadily.

“Are you...?” she trailed off.

His expression didn't change as he whispered almost subvocally, “I am at your disposal.”

As much as she ached, she couldn't resist holding her breath and staring into his face as she guided him inside her, wanting to record every detail of his response upon entering her. But as she moved down, he lifted his hips just slightly. As the thickest part of him pushed into her, her body responded, grasping him tightly and almost pulling him up inside her, hastening his entry considerably. She gasped and clutched at the back of the couch, leaning back a moment and reveling in the sensation of being opened and abruptly filled; he pushed deliciously and just-short-of-painfully against the deepest parts of her.

Then she looked at him, framed by her arms and pinned under her hips, and seeing him like that, looking just as he always did but more and other and the same and a veritable furnace of rapid metabolism and nervous energy and now that heat was pressing up _inside her too_... She felt herself clenching around him, squeezing him, and his penis jerked in response, making her jump and inhale sharply.

“A weighted dishtowel,” he started to say, “the ligament-”

She stopped his words with her fingers against his lips. “I don't want to know,” she said, not ungently, amused and exasperated and overwhelmed and raw and vulnerable, more vulnerable than she hoped was apparent. He exhaled a bit raggedly through his nose, tickling her fingers with the heat of his breath. His eyes welled with concern; she should have known better than to believe that she could hide anything from him here, like _this_ , when she couldn't seem to at any other time. She suddenly realized that his arms hadn't left his sides; his fingertips still stroked and tapped at the sides of her legs, but he hadn't reached up to guide her hips, touch her breasts, or really do much of anything. She wryly considered what she knew of his proclivities, removed her fingertips from his lips and whispered, “touch me.”

Abruptly, his arms snaked around her, their rough hairiness and whipcord-and-bone strength cradling her and bringing her in to be crushed against his chest, her soft cheek lightly abraded by his stubble, the pounding of his heart and the heat of his body radiating into her. He held her in place against him as he writhed under her. It was exquisite, and intimate, not like being restrained, or moved in service to another's pleasure; it was like _being hugged_.

In fact, he had one arm clamped around her waist, and the other reached along her back so his hand could gently cradle the back of her head, pressing her into his collarbone as he twisted his neck to plant a fervent kiss on her forehead, and one just under her eye as he moved his hips just so. She felt more than heard him make a low keening noise, and she relaxed completely into his grasp, pinioned on his unbearable heat as he penetrated more deeply.

She was drifting with the push and pull within her, his hand stroking her hair roughly and repeatedly; his chest became damply sealed to hers as his movements became less nuanced and more rhythmic, his breath coming quicker, panting. His thundering heart and the tidal rush of his breath, pressed as close to him as she was, at first obscured the fact those breaths were forming words, whispers, _please, please;_ to hear those words, in that voice, in this moment...

Whatever he needed, she trusted him. She turned her head to bring her mouth close to his ear, and simply whispered _yes_.

He somehow managed to lift her, flip them over so that her back met the fabric of the couch, and then and he was on top without ever pulling himself out of her body, or hurting her, or causing some kind of tangled-limb disaster that would hurtle them both onto the floor. Her head spun a bit though as he rose above her, forehead leaned against his braced forearm, his furred chest heaving as he stared into her face, panting open-mouthed. His face was tense, suffused with something akin to suffering. It sent a dangerously delicious thrill through her as she reached up to cup his face, and he half-winced as she squeezed around him.

“I won't hurt you,” he huffed, “I just...” She grabbed his shoulders roughly and pulled him down to her, wrapping her legs around him and slamming his pelvis flush into hers. He groaned into the sofa cushion, then pulled himself up slightly on his arms, and began shoving himself into her, leaning his forehead against hers, then kissing it breathlessly as his hips drove hers into the cushions. They seemed to have less give to them than she remembered. She felt pierced to the core as he pinned her to the couch with increasingly rapid thrusts, and she felt the same urgency he was plowing into her rising from inside herself.

This was no longer a dance of technique; this was how she secretly felt sometimes running after him, into or out of danger, heart hammering and almost deafened by the rush of blood in her ears. When she made a connection, had a breakthrough, gave in to her impulses and was wildly rewarded. Something had shifted, and it felt dangerous, and perfect, and it was the distillation of every reason she'd had to cast aside anything else to be here with him, and would do it again. She was wholly focused, a certainty clarified beyond thought or logic, that she could never go back to the way she had been before. Two terribly dark stars had collided, smashing each other to atoms, to antimatter, multiplying negatives that had somehow brought them to this event horizon.

Sherlock had begun to tremble, and had pressed his face back into the cushion, muffling the tortured noises he was making. Beyond herself, she grabbed his hair and tilted her hips again to meet him below, moving his head until his ear was close to her mouth. She could see that his eyes were screwed shut, sharp nose pressed flat against the couch, the muscles in his jaw jumping.

“What is it?” she moaned into his reddened ear, watching his pulse pound in his temple. He keened through clenched teeth, then covered her face in breathless kisses, moving his arms under her, hands sinking into her hair as he ground his hips against her. “Sorry, I'm sorry,” he was muttering, “sometimes I _can't_ , I-I just...”

Rather than sobering her, for some reason his words only inflamed her further. She'd never encountered anyone so marvelously, touchingly shameless in their vulnerability. They were so entangled in each other, she couldn't bear to think of them separating now. She pushed his head back down, allowing him to hide in her hair.

He moaned, moving his face further away from her, but pressing closer than ever as he ground his hips in a circle, almost lifting her up in desperation, holding her close to him. “What do you need?” she hissed softly, turning her face to follow him, darting out her tongue to test the outer curve of his ear; felt him shudder as she let her teeth graze its edge.

“ _Hurt me_ ,” he sobbed.

Her heart gave a sickening lurch, not because his words put her off, or that she hadn't been half-expecting it; after all she'd lived with the man for years, witnessed the... handcuffs and all that. It was because _she wanted to_ , she felt a thrill at the thought of he was asking her to do, and it shocked her. _I will do no harm._ Pressed together as they were, she knew he could feel her response, and of course he was paying attention, and _if this wasn't too much to ask then what was?_ How far would they push each other, push themselves? She wrapped her arms around him tightly and pulled him up, bringing his inked shoulder close, and kissed it, tasting its salt with her tongue. She sucked at it, then sank her teeth in and bit down, hard.

“ _More_ ,” he choked, sounding like he was at the pinnacle of agony, or bliss. “ _Joan, please_.”

She let go with her teeth, and made a quick decision. She tested a fingernail against her thumb, the wrapped her arms around him again, this time digging her nails into the back of his neck. He made a choked noise as his movements against her, inside her shortened and sped up. A jolt of adrenaline hit her bloodstream, fizzing along her nerves in a heady rush, setting her heart hammering even more violently than it had been. She was drowning in a sea of dangerous emotions and pleasure, bringing her close to a precipice she hadn't even imagined.

Clenching her jaw, she dragged sharp fingernails down his back as hard as she could, feeling some of the skin on his back catching, curling up under them. He shouted hoarsely into the cushion, seeming to buck away from, _and into_ , the pain at once, his tense muscles loosening and quivering as she flayed him. She felt an absurdly incongruous rush of tenderness for him as she clawed at the middle of his back. Listening to him sob a moment, she tilted her hips again under him, digging her heels into the backs of his thighs to attain the right angle to for her purposes. She was so close, and _she_ needed, but _he_ needed...

Madness took hold of her, shook her between its jaws, and she clawed as hard as she could from the center of his back down his sensitive sides. She felt skin split under her nails as she pushed up to impale herself on him, nearly straightening her legs around his, her heels digging into his muscled calves, pinning them. With a hoarse rasp, he shouted open-mouthed into her hair as his hips bucked wildly, then froze for an endless instant as his penis flicked like a light switch, unlocking something deep inside her and she was coming, bucking under him mindlessly, their sweaty bodies straining into each other selfishly, hungrily, then transcending concepts like _self_ and filling them to the brim with each other.

He was starting to collapse against her, and she felt his hand fumble at where they were joined, holding the base of the condom. She gave a small yelp as he pulled out of her. He managed to fall sideways onto her upper leg with a groan. It ended up pinned under his waist between his ribcage and hip, neither set of bones digging in, and he curled around to hold her, one of his hands cupped under her sweaty, bedraggled head. They lay panting like that for a few long moments, foreheads touching.

She tensed her thigh in a bid to reclaim it, and he heaved himself up just long enough for her to pull it out from under him, and she flopped back against the cushions as they lay parallel, facing each other lengthwise on the couch.

She just looked at him, marveling at how incredibly still he seemed. His face was relaxed, eyes open, no particular expression creasing it and that was so _unusual_ to see, she reached out with her left arm to touch his uncreased brow with her fingertips. Before she made contact, he looked down, grimaced slightly, and she felt his arm move, followed his eyes down to where he was pulling the condom off his softening erection with a wet snap, somehow managed to knot it _one handed_ , and then casually tossed it backwards over his shoulder where it fell to the floor with with a slithery _plop_.

“Well, that was disgusting,” she said lightly, his face close enough that she had to focus a bit to keep his eyes from blurring into one cyclopian orb, and she tilted her head back a bit to see him more clearly.

“ _Sex_ is disgusting, Watson,” he intoned, his face open and relaxed and more amused than she'd seen it in a very long time. “That doesn't make it less...any of the rest of what it is.”

“And what's that?” she asked curiously, touching his feet with hers. He huffed an amused breath, but didn't answer. She couldn't quite bring herself to care, feeling as relaxed and filthy and comfortable as she did, except for...

“I don't think I've ever had to pee so bad in my entire life,” she informed him stoically.

“I'm bleeding,” he replied in the same tone.

She rolled her eyes away from his and blushed hotly as she looked at the scores she'd left along his sides; she had in fact drawn blood in a few places.

“Which is certainly is not a first for me,” he amended hurriedly, “nor did I mean to imply that it is in any way an _unwelcome_ circumstance.”

Her mouth curled up at his earnest tone, and her tightened abdominals reminded her urgently of the pressure in her bladder. She shot back, “If you make me laugh right now, we'll see how you welcome a _repeated_ circumstance. And incidentally, I don't think my legs work again yet, so there may be additional consequences,” she finished, raising her eyebrows at him pointedly.

“Duly noted,” he deadpanned, then his face slowly shifted to a more unsure expression. His mouth squirmed a bit, he swallowed and asked a bit querulously, “What happens now?”

She sighed, and smiled without bitterness.

“I have no idea,” she answered gently.

**Author's Note:**

> [[volcano-damien rice](https://youtu.be/ZduDvIBu3EU)]


End file.
